


Echoes of Violet

by clotpolesonly



Category: Teen Wolf (TV)
Genre: Asexual Character, Asexual Derek Hale, Asexuality, Character Study, Emotional Hurt/Comfort, F/M, Internalized Acephobia, M/M, Past Derek Hale/Paige, Past Kate Argent/Derek Hale, Past Relationship(s), Questioning, Rape/Non-con Elements, Sex-Repulsed Derek Hale, Sexual Identity, Statutory Rape, Warning: Kate Argent
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-10-26
Updated: 2018-10-26
Packaged: 2019-08-08 00:34:40
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Rape/Non-Con, Underage
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,093
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/16419059
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/clotpolesonly/pseuds/clotpolesonly
Summary: With his friends, Derek wonders. With Paige, he questions. With Kate, he doesn't stop it.With Stiles, he doesn't have to.





	Echoes of Violet

**Author's Note:**

> ever since i got the first ace vibe from Derek, this has been in my head. just how much him being asexual (an asexual _boy_ especially, with toxic ideas of masculinity on top of the standard compulsory sexuality) would've impacted his relationships and especially how much it would've informed the situation with Kate. i just have a lot of feelings, so here they are, for Asexual Awareness Week.

At fifteen, Derek wonders. His friends toss around _looks_ complete with rib-elbowing and suggestive eyebrow waggles, and he feels like he’s completely missing the joke but he elbows back because everyone’s doing it. He doesn’t want to be the odd man out, doesn’t quite understand what he’s not getting here or why he’s the only one out of sync.

He figures it out eventually: girls (sometimes boys), kissing, touching, _sex._

He still doesn’t get it. He laughs along anyway because he thinks, maybe, he _should_ get it. He’s supposed to. Everyone else does.

He’s questioning, with Paige. His feelings for her are real and strong, and when he holds her hand he finally understands what all the sappy songs on the radio are about. They hang out, they talk, they cuddle, they even kiss sometimes, and it’s all amazing. And yet he’s still caught off guard when his friend slaps him on the back and congratulates him on finally _getting some._ It takes him a few seconds to even translate what that means. He’s not (getting some)—the thought hasn’t even crossed his mind—but he doesn’t correct them and he’s not sure why.

He never _gets any_ with Paige; he never has the chance. A few weeks later she’s dead and it’s his fault and sex is even further from his mind than it usually is. His family doesn’t understand (the ones that know anything at all), and Derek can barely look at them with his new eyes. His friends are weird and distant and awkward around him, like they just don’t know what to say, and that’s Derek’s fault too.

Everything is.

And then there’s Kate. Miss Kate, the substitute english teacher, who looks at him like he’s something special. Who touches his shoulder gently whenever she passes him in class, lingering just a little bit. Who tells him how smart he is, how talented, how mature for his age. Who smiles that little, private, mischievous smile at him like _they’re_ the ones in on a secret now.

He likes the feeling. (He likes any feeling that isn’t guilt right now.)

When she kisses him the first time, he questions again. Things with Paige had an innocence to them—after all, they were young and it was their first anything with anyone. But Kate isn’t young. She isn’t a girl, she’s a _woman,_ and she touches Derek like a woman touches a man, and he doesn’t know what to do.

This is what all his friends talk about, isn’t it? The thing they joke and whisper and tease about. The thing they make elaborate plans to get as soon as possible. Kate is the kind of woman they whistle and leer at, the kind of woman they spend hours fantasizing about, and she’s here with Derek, wanting him and kissing him and _touching him._

What kind of teenage boy _doesn’t_ want sex, he thinks? It’s practically in the definition! Sex with a beautiful, witty, charismatic older woman is every teenage boy’s dream. What the hell is wrong with him that he doesn’t want it?

This is what he’s _supposed_ to want. And it’s obviously what Kate wants, what she _expects_ of him. It’s what a man does with the woman he loves, everyone knows that, and he doesn’t want Kate to think that he doesn’t love her. Or that he’s not _man enough_ to satisfy her. He doesn’t want to disappoint her. He doesn’t want her to give up on him, to leave him here alone and go find someone else who can give her what he can’t.

(He doesn’t want her to think he’s _broken._ )

When she pushes for more, he doesn’t stop her, because he thinks he loves her. When he says to slow down and she doesn’t, he swallows down the bile in his throat and doesn’t protest again, because he doesn’t want her to leave him. When she kisses him goodnight and murmurs against his lips how good he was, he cries, because it didn’t _feel_ good and he doesn’t understand why.

He doesn’t question anymore after the fire. He doesn’t want to think about it—it’s just one in a very long line of things he doesn’t want to examine. And it doesn’t really matter; it’s not like he lets anyone close enough for sex to be on the table anyway. It’s just him and his sister, and who cares if it’s _trauma_ or if _it’s something_ else that means he never gets that itch to scratch like Laura does sometimes.

It’s not until years later, long after things have gotten worse and then better and worse and better and better again, that the question comes back. Not until the first time Stiles holds his hand. It isn’t quite the same as with Paige—they’re not fifteen and it’s no one’s first anything—but it brings up all those same sappy love song feelings, and suddenly Derek doesn’t know what to do again because he _still doesn’t understand._

He doesn’t understand the way Stiles (and plenty of other people, honestly) looks at him sometimes, even though he knows by now exactly what it means. The pheromones make his nose itch and his stomach lurch, and the feeling comes back of _not man enough._ He wasn’t sure with Kate, but he’s sure this time that he doesn’t want that, though he’s not sure if it’s _because_ of Kate or if he never would’ve wanted it—if he’s just always been broken like this.

But Stiles isn’t Kate. If there’s one thing that Derek is sure of, it’s that, and so he doesn’t let the sickening anxiety in his gut convince him that Stiles will leave. He tries to quell the tremor in his soul as he tells Stiles _no_ and _sorry_ and _please,_ but the shaking doesn’t stop until Stiles pulls Derek into his arms and whispers back _okay_ and _don’t be_ and _always._

It’s only a week before Derek finds a printout on his coffee table from a website he’s never heard of and a post-it note that says _maybe?_ in Stiles’ spidery handwriting. A term, a definition, an article or two, some testimonials that sound an awful lot like him. It’s all his thoughts poured out on paper by someone else’s pen and it shakes him like nothing else.

But it’s a good shake, the kind that knocks back in the pieces of himself that had felt out of place for so long, and he takes what feels like his first real breath in years.

 

**Author's Note:**

> [also on tumblr with an edit](http://clotpolesonly.tumblr.com/post/179458051076/aaw-ace-headcanon-derek-hale-at-fifteen-derek)


End file.
